Tapiture Raises $825,000 for E-Commerce Expansion

Tapiture, a Venice startup website for men to share their favorite photos and videos, has tapped into $825,000 in seed funding.

Money from the round, which came from a number of undisclosed angel investors, will be used to grow Tapiture’s engineering team as it prepares to launch an e-commerce platform and expand into mobile.

The seven-person company, which has offices along the Venice Beach boardwalk, expects to double its staff in the coming months.

Chief Executive John Ellis said Tapiture needs to expand its staff to build out its new e-commerce business.

Tapiture currently doesn’t have a revenue stream. The site, which is often compared to social scrapbook Pinterest, allows men to “tap” photos and videos from around the web to share with their Tapiture followers.

The company plans to hire buyers to scope out trendy menswear and other goods to sell on the site. And if a photo of a certain blazer, for example, becomes especially popular on Tapiture, the company will have its buyers source the product to begin selling it as well.

“What we’ve done is created a site that’s very entertaining,” Ellis said. “But the audience is also being exposed to products. They’re saying, ‘That’s cool. How do I buy that?’”

While Pinterest has captured a large audience with female users, men have largely been left out. Tapiture is one of a number of sites looking to capture that male demographic – specifically an affluent man between the ages of 24 and 34.

It was founded by brothers John and Leo Resig who also started humorous video website TheChive.com. Ellis said that Tapiture hopes to capture the audience that TheChive has already developed.

“We have some demonstrated success in this space with this market segment,” he said. Many of our target audience were loyal Chivers through college. We’re catching them on the next phase of their life.”

The company announced Tuesday that had an audience of 4.1 million unique viewers during the fourth quarter and the site registered 78 million page views.